


favorite shade of sky

by baroquemirrors



Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-05-31 14:51:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6474664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baroquemirrors/pseuds/baroquemirrors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is why they advised her not to become too involved with her clients. <i>You can’t save everybody, they told her.</i> But looking at Alex now, watching the way she disappears under the weight of her own memories, Piper knows she’ll never manage it. She wants to help, but more than that: she wants to be the one to save her.</p><p>(lawyer/client AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a completely rewritten two-shot version of a fic I started (and abandoned) more than a year ago, dedicated to the very devoted and patient reader who kept nudging me about it. You know who you are, & thank you.

It’s been five days since Alex’s last fix, and the detox is worse than she remembers. 

The absence of heroin is a vacuum that keeps filling itself with images from the past, snatching up old memories to drag them naked and confused into the present.  Sometimes when she wakes up, disoriented and aching, she mistakes the red door of her cell for a spray of blood on the walls of a hotel room.  The image overwhelms her: she can smell cigarette smoke and the croque-madame Fahri ordered from room service, and it’s like she’s suspended inside the moment, like she never left the hotel at all and everything since then has been an elaborate daydream. 

She takes a deep breath and presses her back flat against the wall, her spine slotting into the grooves of the cinderblocks. Somewhere down the row a woman is howling. The mournful cries rise in pitch, repeating over and over until other inmates begin shouting over the sound.

_“Not again!”_

_“Hey, shut the fuck up!”_

_“Can someone get this bitch a muzzle?”_

The inmate in the cell next to Alex’s is awake now too, kicking her feet against the wall between them, a rhythmic _thump thump thump._ Every inmate in the SHU seems to reach a point where they just need to make noise, to remind themselves that they aren’t voiceless. That’s the worst thing about solitary: how unreal it feels, and how inconsequential you become locked up inside of it. The world goes on without you—or maybe it doesn’t, because how would you know? You can’t see anyone else, and they can’t see you, and you’re not sure if any time has passed or if you only imagined it.

There’s bang as the lock on her cell is opened, and then a CO’s wide-shouldered frame fills the doorway.

“On your feet, Vause.”

“Where are we going?” Alex’s voice sounds brittle from disuse. When she stands, her limbs feel leaden. 

“Hands,” he says, ignoring her question.

She holds out her wrists and the guard shackles them, more tightly than he needs to. Alex knows she’ll see bruises when he takes the cuffs off later. He leads her down the labyrinthine corridors of the solitary housing unit and then out into the atrium where gen pop lives, their cells stacked along the mezzanines. There are no crimson doors here: everything looks washed out and dreary, passing by in a blur of beige and grey.

The CO is holding Alex’s arm as they walk, his gigantic fist curled around her bicep. It triggers another flash of memory: the way Aydin marched her out of the hotel building, holding her just like this but with the mouth of a pistol pressed into the small of her back. He shoved her into an SUV—black, with tinted windows, the kind you always see in cop procedurals. They rode for several miles, pressed together in the backseat: Aydin with his gun at the ready and Alex trying to figure out how it had all changed so quickly, her world caving in overnight. 

“Keep moving,” the CO says, giving Alex a little shove.

He takes her to a room not much bigger than her cell in the SHU, except this one has a table and two chairs in the middle. Ostensibly it's some kind of max security visiting area. She sits in the chair closest to the door and waits while the CO cuffs her to it. Then he leaves her alone in the room, shutting the door behind him. 

It isn’t the good kind of alone, the kind that feels safe and comforting—it’s the kind that fills Alex’s chest with an inflating balloon of panic, until her breathing becomes tight and shallow. She looks up and notices a square of light set high on the wall, a tiny bar-less window. She hasn’t seen the sky in almost a week. It’s pale grey and patchy with light; the color of dawn, which means it’s morning. 

What color was the sunrise, the day after Fahri’s murder? Alex can’t remember. She isn’t even sure there _was_ one.

The door flies open, and it jolts her so bad she can feel the cuffs bite into her wrists as she yanks them instinctively toward her body. Withdrawal has made her twitchier. She thinks it’s the correctional officer returning, but when she turns her head to glance at him she finds a woman staring at her; a young blonde wearing a business suit that has _department store clearance_ written all over it. Her hair is long and crimped and pulled back into a half ponytail, and she’s holding a leather folio under her arm, clutching it like a lifeline. 

“Alex Vause,” she says, and her voice has a nervous lilt that makes the name sound like a question.

“Yeah.” Alex radiates hostility. “Who are you?” 

“I’m Piper Chapman. I’m your assigned counsel.”

She takes a step forward, extended her hand like Alex is supposed to shake it. Alex wiggles her own wrists instead, pointedly jangling the handcuffs until the lawyer looks mortified.

“I’m sorry,” she says, blushing. “I, just- sorry.”

Alex rolls her eyes because, _of course,_ they sent her an attorney who looks like she took the bar exam last weekend. “Assigned counsel for what?” 

“The trial,” Piper Chapman answers. 

She’s still standing by the door. Her eyes shift around the room, taking in the dirty walls, the concrete floor, and the single unoccupied chair. She looks mildly frightened, like she’s never done this before, and it’s obvious she doesn’t belong here. She’s too glossy; too soft. Prison hardens everyone, both inmates and officers, but all Alex can see when she looks at Piper is an out-of-place meekness. 

_“What_ fucking trial?”

When the lawyer says, “Kubra’s,” it resounds in Alex's ears like the crash of the walls falling in on her. Because, _fuck_.

The lawyer takes a seat, lowering herself gingerly into the chair across the table from Alex. “He’s been extradited. And since your conviction was for crimes associated with his business, the prosecution will need you to testify. I’m here to help you arrange your statement.” 

Alex’s hands have begun to shake. The cuffs clank embarrassingly against the metal frame of the chair, like morse code tapping out her secrets.

“Are you okay?”

She grits her teeth. “I’m _fine_.”

Piper’s eyes lower until she’s staring at the bundle of files on the table in front of her, like she’s afraid to look at Alex; like being in the presence of a junkie embarrasses her. She starts sliding her bracelet around nervously with the fingers of her opposite hand.

“They told me you were detoxing,” she says, so quietly it’s practically a whisper.

Alex feels a hot rush of shame. She tries to picture herself the way other people must see her: the khaki scrubs, the limp, lusterless hair, the trembling fingers, the thin sheen of sweat. It’s humiliating, but worse than that, it’s _dangerous_. This isn’t like going to rehab in Northampton, where the staff is paid to be discrete. This is prison, where any sign of weakness is an opportunity someone else could take advantage of. As soon as she gets clean she needs to get herself together.

“Look,” she says, with as much finality as she can muster, “I won’t be making any statements. I already testified, at my _own_ trial. As far as I'm concerned, I’m done. ”

The lawyer brushes an errant lock of hair away from her face and glances up again, and Alex is struck once more by how young she seems. There’s an innocence in the smooth, uncreased planes of her face that looks misplaced in the florescent light of the meeting room.

“This is really important,” Piper says.

“Then let the prosecution deal with it.”

“Your testimony would—“

“No offense,” Alex interrupts, “but who the fuck asked you? What are you, like, a year out of law school?”

The lawyer leans back a few inches like she’s shrinking away from a blow. Alex can see her jaw clench as she swallows, and her eyes flick toward the door as if she feels just as trapped as her client does.

“I’m sorry,” she says, sounding genuinely apologetic, “but this isn’t optional. They’re going to put you on the stand. You have to give a statement. I’m just trying to help you.”

Alex laughs, and it comes out sounding somewhere between a creak and a groan, like the starting clank of long-unused machinery.  “Sure, you’re trying to help me. You walk in here with that discount rack ensemble, and that Bambi-eyed, deer in the headlights expression, and I’m supposed to believe this isn’t your first assignment? I mean why the _fuck_ should I trust you?”

“Because this is my job.”

“Right. Wouldn’t want to put your paycheck in jeopardy.” 

“No,” Piper says, frustrated. “That’s not what I meant.” She opens one of the folders in front of her and shuffles through its contents until she finds what she’s looking for. “Your deposition. In it, you listed six other people who were part of the ring. Four of them are currently serving time in federal. Two of them got off on lesser charges.”

“So?”

“So you testified against them, and they testified against you. Every single person in this case knows that you were placed high enough in the cartel to work with Kubra directly. You can’t claim that you don’t know him if there are six other witnesses who say you do. The court will never buy that, and it’ll just get you added time for perjury.”

Alex’s determination falters for just an instant, a span of seconds in which she can clearly hear her own heartbeat. “Sounds a lot like _my_ problem.”

The lawyer stares at her pleadingly, but Alex closes her eyes. She pictures Fahri immediately, his body on the floor with a neat bullet hole in the forehead. If that was for a minor fuck up, she can only imagine the kind of retribution Kubra would unleash for ratting him out to federal investigators.

Alex can feel beads of sweat forming on her forehead, but whether it’s from the heat or the fever or the fear, she doesn’t know. She opens her eyes again. 

“When’s the trial?” 

“Three weeks from now, maybe four. The date still hasn’t been set.”

“Well then, I think we’re done here. Thanks for your time, Piper.”

“Wait. You need to add me to your PSI so you can call me, okay? Your counselor has my phone number.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna do that.”

“Alex, I’m your lawyer _.”_

“Hey, officer!” Alex raises her voice. “Officer Johnson? We’re done in here!” 

The look Piper gives her on the way out is some combination of disappointment and pity, from which Alex quickly averts her eyes. She doesn’t need some stranger judging her. She doesn’t want to be felt _sorry_ for.

But when she’s alone in her cell again with the red door closed behind her, she regrets that she didn’t take more time to study the color of the sky outside the window. She doesn’t know how long it will be before she glimpses it again—that luminous square of early morning light, proof that the sun is still rising even on the days she doesn’t see it.

_________________________________________________

 

Alex passes forty-eight of restless pacing inside the box, listening to the muffled shouts and screams of inmates down the row, before that same need to be heard begins welling up inside of her. And it’s strange, because she’s always been comfortable with silence. Back up the hill she’d sometimes go days without talking to her bunkie—although, to be fair, there weren’t many conversation topics of common interest between Alex and the religious meth head she lived with. Still, the quiet never bothered her as much as it did now. There was a lump in her throat she was afraid would keeping building until it became a scream.

The conversation with her new lawyer was the longest talk she’d had with anyone in more than a week, and she finds herself wishing she’d savored it more. The only people she sees are the COs who bring her meal trays and the one who sometimes takes her to the showers, but none of them are worth trying to talk to. She should have let Piper speak a little longer, if only to enjoy the sound of another human voice producing something softer than a broken howl.

_“Let me out of here!”_

_“Yo, shut that bitch up!”_

_“Give me a gun and I’ll do it myself!”_

The voices are muffled by thick concrete but Alex can still hear them. It’s hard to sleep for more than a few hours at a time with the shouts always breaking the silence, and if that doesn’t wake her then the nightmares will. Today she woke up dry-mouthed and itchy, and even though she knows the worst of the withdrawals are over she's still craving it.

The kicking starts up on the other side of the wall. If she has to listen to it much longer, Alex is pretty sure she'll go insane. She wants to talk to somebody. She wants to know what color the sky is.

A moment later she’s pounding on the door, beating her fist against the metal. “Hey, I need to talk to my counselor. Hey!” 

A CO slides open the viewing window, frowning at her. “You can’t see your counselor except for scheduled visits. You know that.”

“My case is going back to trial. I have a right to contact my lawyer.”

“You don’t have _any_ goddamn rights unless I give them to you, inmate.”

“I’ll that to tell my attorney. I’m sure a civil liberties suit against the Department of Corrections would interest her.” She tries to look confident as she says it, like this is a legitimate threat, although the image of Piper Chapman trying to intimidate someone with a lawsuit like some Elle Woods wannabe is admittedly comical.

The guard rolls his eyes. “I have to check with my supervisor,” he says, slamming the window shut again.

Twenty minutes later Alex is standing in the telephone nook of the atrium while everyone else is on evening lockdown. She looks at the piece of paper in her hand with the phone number scrawled in her counselor’s writing. _This is stupid,_ she thinks, and then dials it anyway. 

_“An inmate from Litchfield Federal Prison is attempting to contact you. To accept this call, press one.”_

 “Alex?”

Piper’s voice sounds stretched and thin, like she’s speaking from halfway across the continent.

“Yeah. Hey.” Alex is't sure, exactly, what she intended to say.  She’s too aware of the officer standing a few feet behind her, of the handcuffs digging into her wrists as she clutches the phone. It doesn’t feel safe to talk like this. 

“Did you add me to your PSI?” 

“Yeah.”

“That’s good, Alex. That’s great."

“Yeah,” she repeats, like she’s suddenly forgotten every word in her vocabulary. “Look, I was thinking… about what you said the other day. About, you know, giving a statement. And I think… I think we should meet again. Can you come back tomorrow?” 

She hates how eager her voice sounds. The desperation is so obvious, so _naked_ , and yet the need still feels greater than the embarrassment. 

“Not tomorrow,” Piper says. “Friday?”

It makes Alex realize that she has no idea what day of the week it is. From the confines of her cell she can barely even keep track of whether it’s day or night, let alone the designations on a calendar. “What’s today?” she murmurs.

“Wednesday.”

“Do you think you could talk to my counselor about having me moved back up the hill to minimum? I’m clean now. Fully detoxed. And I don’t have any violent offenses. They can’t keep me down here, right?” 

“Of course, yes. I’ll talk to him for you.”

There’s a long silence. Alex presses the phone against her ear, listening to a rustle of papers on the other end of the line. She tries to imagine what Piper’s desk looks like: if it’s just a cubical in a massive office building, or a private office in a tiny practice somewhere in the suburbs. She pictures a wall full of windows and sunlight spilling onto the desk, bathing the wood in warm golden light and glinting off the bracelet encircling Piper’s slender wrist.

“Wrap it up, inmate,” the CO growls.

“I have to go,” she says into the phone.

“I’m glad you changed your mind. I’ll see you Friday?”

“Yeah, okay.” 

On her way back to the SHU Alex walks past another window. The sky is pale and pink and soft as cotton. It reminds her of morning in Amsterdam: how she woke at dawn on the first day of her inaugural trip to Europe, eager to explore the city. How it felt like the beginning of a free vacation— every meal, every mile of cab fair charged to someone else’s tab.

She’s paying for it now: every dime, every dollar, every hour of borrowed time.

 

____________________________________________________

 

As she passes through the security gate that separates the visitor’s lobby from the prison, Piper thinks about it how it was put in place to keep the lives on either side from touching each other. 

The inmates and the people who care about them exist in two separate realities, and Piper wonders what their visits must be like—if they pass scraps of hope furtively between themselves like contraband. If the news they exchange sounds like murmured prayers. If any real piece of the outside world manages to transcend that gate, to plant itself like a weed growing up stubbornly through the concrete.

It’s just after lunchtime and the inmates are out of their cells, milling about the atrium. A correctional officer is escorting her and she doesn’t feel like she’s in danger, but there’s something about the way the other women are looking at her—greedily, _hungrily_ —that makes her wonder if they can sense the outside on her somehow. Perhaps they can smell it: the wet loam of springtime, clinging like earthy perfume and leaving a trail of scent behind her.  Some of the inmates look at Piper like she’s a monster, or maybe a prize, squinting and glaring and making lewd gestures; others stare like she’s a miracle, their eyes wide and wondering. It’s strange, because she’s only ever just been _Piper._ On her best days, _good enough_. On her bad days, _a disappointment._ But now, catching sight of her own reflection in the eyes of the inmates, she feels for the first time like _a metaphor_ , a symbol for something more than herself. 

Sometimes Piper thinks she became a lawyer in order to feel validated in exactly this way: to feel like somebody who matters. And maybe it’s a little selfish, but as long as the job gets done it doesn’t seem to make a different what her reasons are for doing it.

Her client is waiting for her in the dingy little visiting room—chained to the chair, same as last time.

Piper sits down across from her, setting the files down on the table. “Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” Alex echoes.

“You look better.” 

It’s true; Alex looks less pale and a little stronger, like there’s more life in her today. Maybe that’s just what happens after people get clean, when the drug no longer has a hold on them. 

“Thanks,” Alex says. There’s a detectible tone of sarcasm in her voice, but Piper is getting used to the way everything she says sounds a bit like mockery. 

“I talked to your counselor. He says they can send you back up to minimum by the end of the day.”

A visible change comes over Alex’s features then—her eyes widen a little and the lines around her mouth soften. “Thank _god_ ,” she mutters, and then glances away, seemingly embarrassed by her own sincerity.

“You’re really feeling better?”

“Said so on the phone, didn’t I?”

“Okay. Good. I’m glad.” 

Alex raises her eyebrows a little. “Don’t start getting soft on me, counselor,” she says, and the ghost of a smile tugs her lips up at the corners. 

Piper smiles shyly back at her, because it seems like the teasing tone is some kind of peace offering. “Should we get down to business?"

“By all means.” 

Alex leans back in her seat and lets her legs fall open a little, like she’s making herself comfortable, and Piper finds the gesture intimidating. She doesn’t like to admit it, but Alex is… well, beautiful isn’t quite the right word. There’s no construing the pallid, recovering-junkie look as anything exactly _charming_. But there’s a kind of grace to the way she comports herself—even here, even in shackles _._

“Okay,” she begins, refocusing on the task at hand. “I think we should push for a plea deal. Witness protection.”

“What?” The word comes out accompanied by a bark of laughter. “That’s a joke, right? Or are you really _that_ new at this? Convicts don’t get witness protection. Fucking Wall Street financial criminals, maybe, but not drug traffickers.”

“This is a really big case. High profile, federal jurisdiction, lots of media coverage. Kubra is a powerful man with an extensive network. Bringing him down would be a huge coup for the prosecutors, and an embarrassing screw-up if they somehow lose the case. They need your testimony to seal the deal, and I think they’ll be willing to bargain for it.”

Alex shifts in her seat. Her jaw is clenched tight, nostrils flaring. “You told me already that I _have_ to testify. That I don’t have a choice. If that’s the case then I’m pretty sure I have zero leverage.”

“That’s why it’s going to take a little extra convincing. If we can assure them that you’re the innocent party in all of this—“

_“Innocent?_ Seriously? You must not have read the part in my deposition where I gave a full confession.”

“Okay, but you obviously confessed because you were afraid.”

“Thanks. Cowardice is _so_ flattering.” 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Piper says quickly. “I don’t blame you, okay? Cartels are dangerous, and Kubra Balik is—“

_“Don’t,”_ Alex interrupts. “Don’t act like you know my life story, Piper, because you don’t. You don’t know the first thing about me.”

“Then tell me.”

There’s a tense silence. Alex’s gaze flickers like she wants to look away, but she continues to stare resolutely across the table. Her refusal to speak is a kind of challenge, one that Piper finds herself answering.

“Why did you start using drugs again in prison?” she asks.

Alex flinches, and chains of her handcuffs rattle against the chair. “You’re not my fucking therapist.” 

Piper’s pulse quickens so fast she feels like it’s leaving the rest of her behind. “You’re right,” she says, in a voice of determine calm. “I don’t know you. But I’d like to.”

She can hear own heart beating as the blood rushes to her ears, and beyond its insistent thrum is another, softer sound: Alex’s audible exhale as she tries to steady herself, her breathing so forced that Piper can hear it from across the table. The sounds of their individual panic twine together to form a kind of rhythmic duet, percussive yet hushed like distant wind chimes.

It’s Alex who caves first, exhaling into a quiet murmur words. 

“After I got arrested the feds took everything. My money, my apartment, even my personal stuff. Photographs, letters… they said it was all evidence. I don’t know where any of it is now. Maybe it’s all in a file folder somewhere, or locked up in some government storage unit. Who knows. But I think it’s probably just… _gone_.”

Alex’s glances up again and her irises are the color of aging copper, like they got left out in the rain too long and lost their shine. “You say you want to get to know me—fine. But I don’t have a _me_ , anymore. Not really. They took away everything I had, so I’ve pretty much been erased.”

Piper’s heart feels like it’s been yanked a few inches out of place. “I’m really sorry, Alex,” she says softly.

“Yeah, well.” Alex shrugs. “Me too, I guess.”

She’s shrinking back inside herself now, and Piper can see it: the way the light withdraws, leaving her face blank and expressionless. Alex twists her wrists in the cuffs like they’re chafing and Piper feels it too, the kind of pain that spreads and itches.

This is why they advised her not to become too involved with her clients. _You can’t save everybody,_ they told her. _You need to remain indifferent._ But looking at Alex now, watching the way she disappears under the weight of her own memories, Piper knows she’ll never manage it. 

She wants to help, but more than that, she wants to be the one to save her.

 

 

____________________________________________________

 

Piper decides to take a research trip the following week. Alex’s file notes only one relative: an aunt named Linda who lives near the Cape, just a few miles inland. She doesn’t mind the drive. It gives her time to think.

The aunt’s address is a rundown, one-story beach house. The white clapboard siding is dirty and there are panels missing, presumably because they rotted away and never got replaced. The front steps are warped with age and the wooden boards sag a little beneath Piper’s weight, threatening to give way any second. 

The woman who comes to the door is fairer haired than Alex, but Piper can see the family resemblance immediately: the wide, full mouth and the unusual eye color, though darker in hue than Alex’s. 

“Linda Prescott?” 

“That’s right.”

“My name is Piper Chapman. I’m representing your niece.”

Mrs. Prescott squints at her, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the sunlight. “You’re her lawyer?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

For a second Piper’s afraid the aunt will ask her to leave— she looks on the verge of suggesting it, but then seems to change her mind as she lets out a heavy sigh.

 “You’d better come in then,” she says, opening the door a little wider. Piper steps nervously through the frame. 

“Here, have a seat in the den. I’ll get you some coffee.”

“Thanks.” 

She sits down in an old wingback chair situated next to the bricked-up fireplace. The cushion is so thin she feels like she’s about to sink into the springs. The curtains on the bay windows are drawn and everything in the room looks a little melancholy, all the fabrics worn out and faded. 

P iper can’t help but wonder if Alex grew up in a house like this, so sad and lightless. Then she thinks about her parents’ house—all the bright, airy spaces that somehow managed to feel both too cold and too empty—and decides she’s in no place to judge.

The coffee Alex’s aunt hands her is lukewarm and bitter. It tastes like the the morning brew, hours old, but she drinks it for the sake of politeness. 

“Mrs. Prescott, I’m wondering if you can help fill in some family history. I have Alex’s testimony about her time with the cartel” —the aunt flinches— “but I don’t know much about her life before it. I was hoping you could help.”

Mrs. Prescott rubs the knuckles of one hand distractedly against the top of her knee, her expression skeptical. “I’m not sure how that’s supposed to help her case.”

“Sometimes it’s beneficial to paint a more holistic picture for the jury. It makes her more sympathetic, adds to her credibility as a witness.” 

“Hold on,” she says, getting to her feet. “I have some of Diane’s old things around somewhere.”  She comes back a few minutes later carrying a heavy cardboard box, which she sets down on the coffee table.  “Here. You can look through it—take all the time you need. I’ll be in the kitchen.” 

There’s a faraway, slightly haunted look in the aunt's eyes as she says it, and Piper can understand why she wants to leave the room. It must be painful, dredging up her deceased sister’s past like this; discussing a criminal niece she barely has contact with.

“Thank you,” Piper tells her, in what she hopes is a tone of real sincerity. 

The collection inside the box seems random at first: old VHS tapes labeled with dates that Piper doesn’t know the significance of; a white pleather jacket fitted for a young teenager that must have belonged to Alex. At the bottom there are piles of paper, letters kept in their envelopes with foreign stamps and international addresses: Belgium, Prague, Jakarta, Fiji. She opens one and a photograph falls out, and Piper feels a pleasurable jolt of recognition: a younger Alex stands in the foreground of the shot, the Eiffel Tower filling the sky behind her.The picture looks unplanned, like the camera went off accidentally: Alex’s mouth is hanging open mid-laugh, and her eyes are shining and delighted.

Piper flips the polaroid over to read the note on the back: 

_Mom, I’m in Paris! It’s every bit as pretentious as you’d think. I feel like I’m in a bad foreign film, but in the best way possible. We took a posed photo in front of the tower, but my friend said you’d probably like this one better. I agree. Talk soon— Love, Alex._

She turns it over again, smiling. The face in the photograph is so unguarded, so expressive in its enthusiasm, that it’s difficult to reconcile with the one Piper has now spent several hours seated across from. This younger Alex is wearing black jeans and a plain dark t-shirt, and it feels strange to see her in something so casual and form-fitting compared to the prison uniform. She looks a little familiar somehow, like someone Piper could have met in college had their worlds been just a little bit closer.

For an hour Piper sits and sifts through the memories: elementary school report cards, gap-toothed childhood photos, old articles of clothing. They’re all pieces of a puzzle adding up to _Alex_ , a different and more complete image of her than the one Piper already knows. The box is labeled 'Diane,' _but_ everything inside of it is about her daughter. It’s like nothing else mattered enough to save—like Alex was her most prized possession.

Eventually Piper glances up to find the aunt hovering in the doorway, her fingers gripping the wooden frame like she’s afraid to come any closer.

“She was always such a strong-willed kid,” Linda says quietly. “Grew up with a huge chip on her shoulder. Diane was the same. As soon as she had Alex, it was like the two of them against the world.”

Piper smiles softly. “Do you mind if I bring a few of these things to her? I think she’d like to have them.”

The aunt nods, but her eyes are staring past Piper like she barely even sees her.  When she speaks her voice is cracking.

“I used to be glad Diane wasn’t around to see how this all turned out- her daughter in prison. She loved that girl so much, you know, I thought it would have broken her heart. But now… now I’m not sure it would have mattered. Everything that kid did made her so proud. What’s the knowledge of one mistake, compared to a full life of happiness?”

The words don’t really feel meant for Piper: it’s like Alex’s aunt is talking to someone else entirely, some presence in the room that only she can see. 

So Piper packs up the photographs and the letters and quietly apologizes for the intrusion, leaving Alex's aunt alone to speak with Diane's ghost.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

It’s Saturday and Alex is in the yard, enjoying the relative freedom of minimum security. She finds an empty patch of grass and lays down on it, feeling the feathery blades tickle her skin, and then she stares skyward until her vision is filled with nothing but cloudless blue. 

It brings back memories of waking up on the beach in Phuket: dusted with sand, pleasantly disoriented, miraculously not too hungover. The sky and the ocean were one brilliant color, swallowing the horizon hungrily between them. Then she starts thinking about flying—about that moment during takeoff when the plane finally breaks through the cloud cover, and all you can see out the window is clear skies and sunlight. 

She closes her eyes and imagines escaping over the twelve-foot security fence with the same effortless grace as an airplane; concrete turning to vapor at the touch of her fingertips until there’s nothing left.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

“I brought you something,” Piper tells her a few days later, sliding a photograph across the table.

It’s the one Alex sent to her mom during the first trip to Paris, and her fingertips tremble as she reaches for it.“Where did you get this?” she murmurs.

“I went to see your aunt. Asked her if I could bring some things back for you.”

“There’s more?”

“A whole folder. You can have it as soon as it passes inspection.” 

Alex’s throat is so tight she can barely breathe. She slides the polaroid off the table and into her lap, holding it reverently in her shaking palms like some remnant of her mother’s magic might still cling to the paper. 

“I just wanted you to know, Alex, that you haven’t been erased. You're still here, see? I found you.”

The way Piper says it is so tender it almost makes Alex want to cry. She glances up to look at her, and that’s the moment she realizes: the blue of Piper’s irises is exactly her favorite shade of sky. 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unsurprisingly, I didn't pace the story quite right and it'll take one more chapter to finish. Enjoy :)

Alex spends hours poring over the contents of the folder Piper brought her. It’s mostly postcards, the ones she sent her mother during her years of travel. They span from that first trip to Amsterdam to two weeks before Diane’s death, when Alex was still sober. Reading them is like hearing the echo of her own voice bouncing of the wall of her past happiness, distorted by the distance it had to cross to reach her again. 

Was she really so unconcerned about her job back then? So carefree as to pepper her letters with stupid jokes and exclamations? She must have been. The postcards read like laughter. Alex can picture herself smiling as she wrote them, can imagine her mother’s grin as she read the words and then flipped the cards over to look at pictures of beaches and foreign city skylines. So glossy and clean, so comfortingly deceptive. Alex had managed to make the travel sound like one long vacation. 

She didn’t write, _“I slept with a girl and then convinced her to swallow a balloon filled with heroin, so she could shit it out when she got back to the states.”_ She never said, _“I taught a nineteen year-old how to sew two pounds of smack into the lining of a suitcase and walk through security without sweating.”_

Instead, she wrote, _“I miss you. Berlin is amazing.”_

And, _“I love you. I wish you were here.”_

After that, she didn’t write anything. There was no one left to send postcards to. 

Alex spreads all the memories out on top of her bunk, arranging them like a portrait done in mosaic. A double, really—hers and her mother’s. Alex doesn’t know how to separate them. Some part of her will always be a trailer park kid waiting up nights while Diane works the late shift, always hoping her mom might still come home. Some part of her is still an international phone call answered on the second ring, her mother’s voice saying, “ _Hi Al! Where are you?”_

That question haunted her after the funeral. It echoed in her ears for months, most often when she was drunk or crashing. She’d crumple in a heap upon the cold linoleum in the bathroom, wiping vomit from her chin, and think: _where are you?_ The words would have a sad cadence, less of her mother’s inflection and more of her own, but she still couldn’t get them out of her head. 

She would extricate herself from someone’s bed in the morning having already forgotten their face. _Where are you,_ she’d wonder, slinking half-naked out of the hotel room.

Even sitting on the veranda of the rehabilitation home in Northampton, her entire body engulfed in afternoon shadow—

W _here are you, Al? Where are you?_

Focusing on the postcards, Alex turns the fragments of her past over in her fingers andpretends she can still remember what _whole_ felt like. What clean meant. What happiness was. She touches each memory, each mosaic tile, wondering how long it will take for time to wear the edges smooth enough that she’s no longer afraid they’ll cut her open.

Outside, the sky is a soft pink blush. Rays of sunlight spread wide as they slant through the window. Alex nestles into their warmth, aiming her cheeks toward them in the expectant way a child waits to be kissed, but no lips brush ever her skin.

 

* * *

 

 

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Start at the beginning,” Piper tells her.

They no longer meet in the isolated legal office. Instead, now that Alex is back in Gen Pop, Piper comes to the regular visiting room. They sit at the table nearest the soda machines, their conversation blanketed by the steady hum of refrigeration. 

Piper is wearing another one of those grey suits she looks all wrong in, like she’s muting herself to fit the prison color palate. Alex wishes she wouldn’t. She wants to see what Piper looks like underneath that dull camouflage—what kind of shine she has, how much sunlight.

“The beginning,” she echoes. “Okay.” 

The beginning, she supposes, was when she met Lee Burley— the man she’d called _dad_ her entire childhood but never actually spoke to until she was eighteen. So that’s where she starts: describing to Piper how she descended the stairs to the club basement with her heart in throat, the wild excitement in her chest edging toward panic as soon as the words _“I’m your daughter”_ spilled out of her mouth. How the next half hour unfolded like the stuttering film reel of a horror movie as Alex played the unsuspecting protagonist, the nauseous upset building until she was forced to excuse herself in search of a bathroom to fall apart in.

“He was… the biggest asshole I’ve ever met,” she tells Piper, “which really, I should have seen coming.” It still hurts to think about it— how quickly the image you build of someone can fall apart, paint running grotesquely down the canvas and mucking up all the colors. 

“But there was this other guy there,” she continues. “Fahri.”

Fahri was _cool_. The kind of cool Alex had hoped her dad would be. The kind she desperately wanted for herself. Fahri offered her a bump, which she declined. He offered a ride home, which she accepted. And then, a few weeks later, he offered her a plane ticket and a chance to get out of the trailer park life she grew up in, and all she had to do was carry a bag through the airport for him. Alex snatched it up with eager fingers, too full of reckless need to spare a thought for the consequences. That was how it started: with a heartbreak and a bad rebound decision she kept finding ways to validate.

“Eventually I became a recruiter, like Fahri. It’s amazing how easy it was, turning girls out as mules. I’d approach them in clubs, bars, wherever barely legal kids still in their I-hate-my-parents phase were hanging out. I’d size them up, talk to them for a while, get to know them. Then I’d offer whatever I thought they needed: money, drugs, attention, escape… whatever. The same way Fahri had done it to me.”

She pauses, checking her lawyer’s face for a reaction, but Piper isn’t looking at her — she’s busy jotting down notes on her legal pad, her pen scrawling messy shorthand across the paper.

Alex wishes she’d stop being so professional. She wants to feel like she’s talking to a _human_ rather than a recording device. She’s never done this before, telling the story in all its uncensored, inglorious detail, and the words are erupting out of her like clouds of dust beaten from an old carpet. She tries not to be embarrassed by the choke-and-wheeze that accompanies them. She learned, when she was in rehab, that sometimes making a mess of yourself is the only way to come clean.

“And that wasn’t… difficult for you?” Piper asks, after a moment of silence. 

Alex leans back and look away.  “Not really,” she says, staring at the soda machine. “I was making ten grand a week— I hardly felt like I’d been scammed. You have to understand— for the first few years, I never felt like I was in danger. I felt _invincible_. I was on top of the world.”

“So you didn’t feel bad,” the lawyer persists, “putting girls in the exact position you’d been put into?”

“Um, wow. Okay. That’s pretty accusatory. Aren’t you not supposed to blame the victim?”

“I’m sorry.” Piper at least has the grace to look embarrassed. “I didn’t mean it like that. Just— you were being used to turn a profit. Didn’t that bother you?”

“We’re _all_ being used to make a profit,” Alex says impatiently. “Even in this fucking place. Did you know that I actually owe money to the DOC for the privilege of being locked up in here? It would take me, like, thirty-five years of prison labor to pay it pack. So, sure— I could have been working at McDonalds for seven bucks an hour while the CEO makes millions. I know what that looks like, because my mom did that her whole fucking life.”

Alex can’t help the bitter downturn in her voice. She remembers her mom’s rotating schedule of part-time and minimum wage jobs—Friendly’s, Macy’s, Dunkin Donuts, Walmart—and knows Piper must have no idea what it’s like to live that way. Alex can read people. It’s a skill she honed during her time with the cartel. And she can read, plain as the florescent light illuminating Piper’s white collar, that her lawyer grew up with the kind of money kids like Alex hardly ever even sniffed on the school bus. She probably has more in common with Alex’s childhood bullies, the Jessica Wedges of the world, than she does with people like Alex and Diane.

“I could have worked for the same exploitive corporations my mom did.” Alex continues, “or, I could work for Kubra. I could go on all-expense-paid trips across Europe. I could ensure that I never had to worry about credit card debt. I could save money to buy my mom a real house instead of trailer. So yeah, I chose the fucking drug cartel. What would you have done?”

Her voice rings with a self-righteous resonance, rising about the drink cooler’s hum. It’s not that Alex never felt guilty about it; she did. The weeks she spent in rehab were some of the worst in her life, not just because of detoxing but because it was the first time she saw so closely the effects of the black market she’d chosen to participate in. She slept, ate, and spent her days surrounded by people whose lives had been ruined by heroin; of _course_ she felt guilty. But what was she supposed to do? You can’t just resign from a drug cartel. There’s no retirement plan for trafficking, unless the kind of rest you crave can be found inside a body bag in a morgue freezer.

“You’re right, Alex. I don’t have any right to judge you.”

“It’s okay,” Alex says wearily. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I know. But I’m trying.”

She sounds sincere when she says it, and Alex is struck anew by the notion that Piper probably knows her past better than anyone. She’s seen the pictures, the letters, tons of things from Alex’s childhood that were supposed to be private. Ordinarily she would be upset by the intrusion, but it’s hard to be mad when Piper is the only reason she has those mementos in her possession again at all. She’s probably the only person in the world, besides her aunt, who understands how much Alex’s mom meant to her. _Why the fuck should I trust you?_ Alex had asked, and in reply her lawyer had gone out and recovered the skeletal bones of her identity. For that, Piper deserved at least the benefit of the doubt.

“I know what you’re getting at,” Alex says. “That I was as much a mule as any of the girls I recruited. That Fahri was using me. I know that’s how it seems, but it was different with him.”

“Different how?”

“He cared about me. I know that sounds really fucking naive, given the situation. But it’s true. When my mom died, he was there for me _._ He showed up at the funeral. It was supposed to be a business call. He didn’t have to come in person, he could have just phoned. But he showed up. He was fucking _there.”_

How relieving it felt, to walk out of the cemetery with leaden feet and look up to find a familiar face. To sit in the passenger seat of the rental car with its lingering whiff of smoke from Fahri’s cigarette, and to know that she wasn’t alone.

“He convinced me to go back to Paris with him. Told me it was going to be okay, that he would help me through it.”

“And then what happened?”

Alex snorts. “We went on a bender. I can barely remember anything after touching down on the tarmac. I’m pretty sure we went right from the airport to one of our favorite clubs.”

Piper has re-entered lawyer mode, scribbling Alex’s dictation so frantically the side of her hand is smeared with ink.

“There was… there was a job that we were supposed to be doing. A pickup at the airport, a girl coming in from Fiji with several pounds of product. But I was so high. We all were. I convinced them to stay, to let the mule find a ride on her own.”

Alex stares down at her lap. Her hands are shaking. She feels too small inside her skin, or else not small enough. “She got arrested,” she says, her voice so thin it’s practically a whisper. She doesn’t want to tell Piper the rest. She wants to crawl under the table, hide from the past, hide from Fahri’s ghost and Kubra’s anger.

“Alex,” Piper says softly. “Tell me.” She’s leaning forward on her elbows, no longer writing. The pen sits abandoned on the table.

“They shot Fahri. They… killed him.”

_“Jesus,”_ Piper whispers, holding her fingers over her lips.

Alex swallows, trying unsuccessfully to resist the memory. She didn’t hear the pistol until it was already over; Fahri was dead before he hit the floor, before the echo of the shot even reached Alex’s ears. She thinks of his last cigarette and how the ash spilled onto the floor afterward. The finality of the image, like some horrible epilogue.

“It was my fault,” Alex croaks. “I fucked up, and I made the decision.” Her fingers clench into fists, nails digging into her palms so hard it feels like they might drawn blood.. She glances up at Piper, finally meeting her eyes. Staring until the blue until she thinks she might drown in it. 

“What happened to Fahri—it shouldn’t have been him. It was my fault. Piper… it should have been me.”

 

* * *

 

Somewhere beneath a pile of papers, Piper’s phone is vibrating. 

“Shit,” she whispers, unfurling herself from the facedown crumple she’s been lying in. A piece of paper is stuck to her cheek; she rips it free and shakes it out of her hand, still struggling to get her bearings.

It’s dark. The building is quiet. The clock on her office wall reads 8:52. 

_Shit_.

Her phone keeps buzzing, and she thrusts her hand into the pile of papers and shoves them around until she finally finds it.

“Hello?”

“Piper!”

“Hey, Pol.” 

“Okay, so you’re _not_ dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“Um… no?” Piper runs her fingertips through her rumpled hair, attempting to tame the mess it somehow became while she was napping. “I’m at the office,” she says. “Why?”

“Because I just got a text—actually, like seven—from Larry. He wants to know why you _stood him up?”_

“Oh. Oh, crap. I forgot that was tonight.”

“Jesus, what are you even doing at the office this late?”

Piper rubs one eye blearily with the heel of her palm, surveying the disaster zone on top of her desk with the other. 

“Working on a case. Well, actually, sleeping. But before that I was definitely working.”

She’d been at it all afternoon, typing up the notes from her earlier meeting with Alex and then trying to match her story up with the testimony from her deposition. The dates were still a little murky; she’d have to ask Alex to clarify them, to ensure that her witness statement for the prosecution was precise. But there was no doubt that once they established Alex’s credibility, her testimony against Kubra would be damning. She could vouch for his presence in specific cities during specific periods of time. She could testify about the large sums of money that were moving through his accounts—money that she herself was often responsible for handling. And then there was the other allegation— that he’d ordered the execution of at least one of his employees, which could induce a whole slew of charges in addition to the counts of conspiracy, money laundering, and illegal trafficking that were already being sought by federal prosecutors.

By all appearances, the case it was on its way to becoming a grand slam of an indictment. As long as they played their cards right Alex could be out of prison within the month. As long as she didn’t back out of testifying. As long as Piper managed to keep her focused and calm— which, after their discussion today, was still very much a concern.

“Well,” Polly tells her, “your workaholic ways just cost you a date with a really nice guy who's is super into you. You’re way overdoing it with this case, Piper.”

“Yeah, Polly. I know.”

“I’m fucking serious. I’ve barely seen you in two weeks! You spend all your time driving back and forth from prison, or falling asleep in your desk chair like my eighty-four year-old grandpa Dennis. I know you think this case is, like, your big break as an attorney, but at this rate you’ll probably exhaust yourself into a coma before it even goes to trial.”

“Wow. Thanks, mom.”

“Oh, _that’s_ a good idea. Maybe I should call Carol.”

“Ha ha. Really funny, Pol. Don’t you dare.” Piper slumps back in her chair, pressing her fingertips against her forehead. “Was Larry mad?”

“Well, he wasn’t happy.”

“Tell him I’ve been swamped at work and I’m really sorry, okay?”

“Why don’t _you_ tell him? I gave you his number.”

Piper suppresses a groan of frustration. “Fine, okay? I will. Look, I gotta go.”

“Fine. Pipe…” Her voice softens. “Promise me you’ll get some rest. And that you’ll start taking better care of yourself. Your job isn’t worth this much insanity, okay?”

“Yeah, thanks Polly. Love you.”

Piper hangs up the phone and lets her body go limp, arms dangling exhaustedly over the sides of her chair. She knows her friend is right—she’s been working too hard, devoting way more time and energy to a single case than is really reasonable.

It’s just that this particular case feels too important to set aside, in ways Piper can only vaguely admit. It’s certainly the most dramatic and consequential one she’s been assigned so far. A federal suit: a conspiracy involving half a dozen convicted individuals, several additional alleged participants, and one of the most wanted cartel bosses in the country.

But push all that aside, and what matters most to Piper is still her own defendant.She finds herself thinking of Alex even when she’s not working on the case. She’ll be home, halfway through a glass of wine, and suddenly she’ll remember something Alex said during their latest meeting. It’ll be enough to make her pause, the glass halfway to her lips, while a blush or a smile takes over over expression. It’s ridiculous. It’s childish, even, like a schoolgirl crush on the upperclass bad girl. 

But Piper can’t help it. She likes Alex. She’s intrigued by her, and she wants to help her, and she wants to know everything about her. Nothing else feels as important right now as this case does— as _Alex_ does.

Polly is right: she’s in too deep. But even if she could pull herself out of it, Piper isn’t sure she’d actually want to.

 

 

* * *

 

At breakfast the next morning Alex sits alone, mindlessly swallowing a serving of something that vaguely resembles scrambled eggs. She keeps replaying the previous day’s conversation over in her mind like a broken record, the needle of her memory always getting stuck at the same moment of playback— Piper getting up from the table to leave, her eyes wide and wet and full of pity. 

Alex doesn’t want to be pitied. She doesn’t want to be treated like a victim, because she doesn’t want to accept that she _was_ one. She spent so many years clinging to the delusion that her life was under her control, and it’s destabilizing to have years of self-deception wrested away from her all at once. 

But it’s also freeing. It means she can unclench her fists a little, stop trying to keep them closed over her secrets. It means she could finally admit what she’s been wrestling with for years: that Fahri took a fatal fall for _her_ bad decision. The guilt has been trailing Alex ever since Paris, as dark and unshakable as her own shadow. It danced around her all through rehab. It followed her back to Europe, to southeast Asia, to Chicago, to Litchfield, never spoken, a silent and unflappable presence. She wonders if finally saying it aloud will make a difference. She hopes it doesn’t change Piper’s opinion of her, whatever that opinion actually is. 

Sometimes when they’re talking, Alex studies Piper’s face: the tilt of her lips, the set of her brow, the subtle lapses of indifference in her expression. Always that determination to remain businesslike; always that moment when the determination fails—the smile that steals furtively across her lips, the self-conscious laugh that comes out in short, shy echoes. Alex wishes she would let it out in full. 

Prison is always so muted, so colorless. It starts to feels like purgatory. Then Piper walks in like some visiting Persephone, incandescent as a summer afternoon, and it’s hard not to hunger after glimpses of her.

“Yo, Vause."  Another inmate, Nicky, slides into the seat across from Alex.  “Got yourself a nice little side piece, huh? Saw you with your girlfriend during visiting hours.”

Alex snorts. “Uh, yeah, no. That’s my lawyer.”

“Sure she is. Everyone loves a good role play. Bet you have her put the power suit on and read you your rights, ‘cause you’ve been _such_ a naughty criminal.”

“God.” Alex’s face scrunches up as she tries to hold in her laughter. “You’re disgusting.” 

“I’ll drink to that. But listen—“ Nicky leans forward to make herself heard over the general buzz of conversation “—maybe you could put in a good word for me. You know, get me on her client list. Because if you’re not hitting that—“

Alex scoops up a spoonful of eggs and flicks them across the table. They miss, flying past Nicky and landing harmlessly on the floor behind her.

“You’re fucking lucky a CO didn’t see that. Pretty gallant, though. Defending your girl’s honor…”

Alex rolls her eyes. 

It kind of makes her wonder, though, about Piper’s personal life. If she has a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. What she does in her free time. Where she lives, who she talks to, what her life looks like on the outside. Because Piper knows everything about Alex, but Alex doesn’t know _anything_ about her.

She moves like a floater across Alex’s vision: a mysterious afterimage, impossible to pin down, the kind of daze that comes from staring too directly at the sun.


End file.
